This place is so intriguing and complex, I’m constantly heeding Mom’s advice to ‘learn something new every day.’ If you’ve been here, you know this perpetual learning curve of which I speak, surely. Or maybe you live somewhere/somehow that, like Cuba, allows – indeed forces – you to learn something new every day. If so, I salute you.

From Ciego’s piña-studded campo to the listing wooden houses of Regla, Cubans are playing the numbers. Like an underground Powerball, La Bolita is technically illegal but in practice allowed to function (not unlike other things here including the world’s oldest profession; two houses sharing one phone line; and foreigners buying property). Not only does it function, La Bolita flourishes as a twice-daily gambling habit nursed across the country.

I was quite surprised to discover how many people I know play La Bolita – work colleagues, neighborhood doctors, Harley dudes, government guys, grannies, ballet dancers. So diverse are the Cubans playing the numbers, I think it may be one of the most genuinely and naturally integrated and equitable systems in contemporary Cuba. La Bolita leaps across class, race, gender, and geographical lines and though I haven’t made a point of asking, I’m sure my LGBT friends are also placing their daily bets (see note 1). In short: La Bolita doesn’t discriminate.

First a little background: Most HIH readers know that until los barbudos rolled into Havana in 1959, Cuba was a viper’s nest of dissolution – rotten with drugs, prostitutes, gin joints, and gambling (no wonder Hemingway called it home!). In those days, fun seekers and ne’er-do-wells from the US used to hop down to use the island like college kids do Cancún and the ghetto: a place to score, get sloppy and slum, before returning to safe, cushy lives back home.

The Revolution put an end to all that (mostly, technically, anyway) and gambling was especially targeted and vilified. Big, lucrative casinos in nightclubs like the Tropicana and Sans Souci and hotels including the Riviera and Capri were shut down, along with smaller enterprises in the back alleys of Barrio Chino and out in Boyeros. La Bolita, however, was a national pastime, a traditional pursuit and while publically and officially banned, has survived all these years. The daily numbers, for those wondering, are drawn in Miami and Caracas, if my sources are correct (see note 2).

From why folks emigrate to how Cubans (mis)behave at all-inclusive resorts, I find all aspects of culture intriguing here. But La Bolita captures my fascination beyond what may be rational. To wit: I recently placed my first bet. I thought this was just a question of picking a series of numbers from the 100 in play and laying down my money á la the NY Lotto. Silly me. This is some really complicated shit and I needed a tutorial from my friend Aldo to place my bet correctly.

>Here’s what I learned:

Numbers range from 1 to 100. Nothing complicated there. But each number corresponds to a symbol – think Mexican lotería.
The symbols are key and transcend simple number-figure association, however. For instance, Cubans often play numbers appearing in dreams: if you’re chased by a Doberman while dreaming, you should play 95 (big dog), if it’s a Dachshund, 15 (little dog) is more appropriate. Beware dreams of 63 leading to 8, because that will land you in 78 and finally 14 (murder, death, casket, cemetery). Scary. When this happens, do you play these numbers, just in case?

Folks also bet numbers they see in their daydreams – I’m sure you know someone who hopes to get a 100 or some 38 (car, money) or a Cubana who has already made their dreams come true through a 62 (marriage) to a foreigner.

The numbers and their corresponding symbols have also passed into common vernacular. Fidel is called the caballo (1) for obvious reasons and for those who doubt my claim that Cuban Spanish can stump even fluent, native speakers, what would you do if your taxi driver said you owe a fish and a nun? Would you hand over $5? $20? $50? You’d be ripping either yourself or him off if you did (see note 3).

My life (like everyone’s if we choose to pay attention) is riddled with symbols and I had no problem knowing what numbers I would play. In fact, I determined not to let this year go by without playing La Bolita as soon as I learned 43 (my age) stands for scorpion (my sign). What could be more propitious?

But how to play? I knew I’d have Aldo place the bet because I didn’t want to show my foreigner face at any of the neighborhood ‘bancos’ – Cuban for Bolita bookie – lest I make them nervous; it is illegal after all. So I’d play 43 and if I needed to pick a bonus number, I figured I’d go with 52 in honor of my beloved Frances.

Were it that easy.

As it turns out, there are all kinds of variations you can play, including the ‘parlé’ (a type of trifecta); a fixed number with additional jackpot numbers; and other combinations which still confuse me. There’s also a specific way to note your numbers on a piece of paper that needs to be folded a special way when you place your bet. The minimum bet is 1 peso cubano (about 4 cents) but most people wager more; payoffs can be huge – Aldo recently hit for 700 pesos and another friend’s uncle once won 5,000. Of course, he’d bet much more over the course of his lifetime, but that’s the gambler’s carrot and curse, no?

En fin: like many things Cuban, I’m sure La Bolita is played differently in different latitudes (see note 4) – including in South Florida where it thrives. What I relate here is simply how it went down in my corner of Cuba. I ended up playing scorpion-San Lazaro-machete (43-17-94) in keeping with various symbolic occurrences lately. Alas, my 37 (brujería) proved powerless: I lost my 25 pesos.

1. Let me take this opportunity to wave the rainbow flag: every May, Cuba celebrates the ‘jornada de anti-homofobia’ – known as IDAHOBIT globally – and it’s one helluva good time. This year’s festivities kick off May 7 and run through May 18 in Havana and this year’s host province, Ciego de Ávila.

2. Over several years of writing this blog, it has become clear that Here is Havana readers are hip, informed, and sit upon a wealth of knowledge; if anyone has light to shed on the mecánica or history of La Bolita, please share!

3. A nun is 5 and a fish is 10; your taxi ride cost $15.

4. While researching this post in fact, a friend of mine and closet bet-placer, told me about La Charada (traditionally la charada china). This predates La Bolita, which takes its first 36 numbers (horse/caballo through pipe/cachimba) from the older chinese tradition. This numbers game dates from the 1800s when Chinese workers arrived on these shores. According to one source, in 1957, Cubans wagered between $90 and 100 million on La Charada, la Bolita and other numbers’ games.

18 responses to “Pushing Your Luck in Cuba”

My Grandparents used to tell me about playing La Charada way, way back from the 1920’s until the point they left in the 1960’s in Santiago. La Bolita was later on, as you said and I completely forgot about it until I read this.

Your description of the Viper’s den which was pre 1959 Habana is absolutely correct with the NYC Mob running the show and paying everyone off. In many ways, I respect Fidel for cleaning the place out in that regard and taking back “his” country and it’s independence.

Because of the Chinese people’s influence as workers, business owners and a lot of them living in the Oriente province in the early 1900’s, they had many things in their culture spill over like this. And of course, how can I forget Chinese food? Interestingly enough, you now see very few Chinese anyplace but Habana.

I think it is a great game for the people to play especially now, dreaming of hope and financial freedom changing their life and dreaming about the numbers that will set them free. Don’t give up and keep playing Blancita…….

Thanks for the great article. The strangest La Bolita occurance in my pretty town of Gibara was two years ago. We threw a big 50th Anniversary bash for my brother and his wife (50 years of legally wedded bliss in Cuba: unheard of!). Half the town bet the number 50. The next day there was a huge buzz on the streets, because, you guessed, it, the number 50 came up! Many big winners. Mami, who had never bet once in here life (too damn frugal except when the door to door salesladies come by with their bags of clothing, jewellry or shoes) promptly went and bet the number 50! She has done so daily for the past two years, and no, the number has never come up again. Every time I go, I take my favourite bookie a big three hole notebook and a pen, which she dictates has to be red.

Bookies! Dios mia!! I have had to stop going to the only one I have ever had any luck with because his house freaks me out. He claims to have fought with Fidel and has a grainy photo to prove it ( although it’s difficult to see any resemblance: the man in the photo is young, toothy and a full shock of jet black hair…now he looks like Bugs Bunny with only his top two middle teeth and bottom two incisors, and his hair, for some unknown reason, is a true Mohawk with a strip of mangy white wisps down the middle and absolutely none on the sides). His house is chock full of “stuff”. One long shelf contains nothing but dolls heads…big, small, some with hair, some just with greasy tufts, all with eyes open, staring at you, although some have their eyes gouged out as well. One shelf holds nothing but the legs and arms of said dolls , but whether they one day long ago matched is anyone’s guess. He has hundreds of dinky toys, categorized into trucks cars, those with wheels, those without. Then there are the glass jars with embalmed bits and pieces of animals, birds’ heads, and in one, a human toe. Every square inch of the walls are covered in old photos, religious photos of St Jude, Jesus, the Virgin de Caridad. When anyone would come to make a really big bet, he would put on a brooch, which consisted of a pin attached to his grimy shirt, a small chain from the pin attached to the shell of a cucaracha that would walk in circles around the pin. The old goat took a shining to this Yuma, who out of respect for my elders, would sit and let him ramble on. And in true Cuban machismo, he grabbed me once and planted a wet sloppy kiss right on my kisser. .His hand on my wrist was like a vice grip and I could barely break free. Last time I ever went there. Now I take my chances with the old bird with the red book.

I’m reading Sonia Sotomayor’s memoir My Beloved World and she writes that either her mom or grandmother use to play the numbers here in New York City. So even the Supreme Court justice did it! I read that and I knew Sonia was my sister and she’s on the US Supreme Court! (I’m Cuban-American). It must be a Caribbean thing. La Bolita!

Oye! what a list! Much more complete than the handwritten page given to me by my cook friend where each number only has one symbol. This is a great resource Caney, thanks but you seem to be using La Bolita/Charada interchangeably, but I thought they were related but different. Thoughts? thanks for reading and writing in

thanks for this Caney! Its not entirely correct/up to date according to my on the ground research (there are now morning and night numbers and not only coming from Miami, Im pretty sure and SMS has arrived, at least in HAvana/10 de Octubre) but I appreciate the info

In my last trip to Cojimar, I met one of the three Catholic nuns that do volunteer work in Cuba.
When I was telling the story to one of the Cojimeros, he told me ” those nuns have cost a lot of money to us.”
“Why is that?’ I asked.
His reply “Imagine seeing three nuns walking by the malecon of Cojimar … everyone bet the 5 and we lost!!”

JA! Así es. Last week, my neighbor gave me a couple of ceramic frogs (better than it sounds), then my satellite radio changed stations on its own – in another room altogether – to station 22. When I checked my bolita list, wouldn’t you know? #22 is frog. So I bet the sucker. Lost. Of course.

When I commented to a friend about the sequence of events he said: the radio changing on its own? That meant you were supposed to play fantasma (ghost), not frog. Live and learn – what life’s all about.

The other betting passion is baseball. In all parques across the country you will find a group of guys yelling, stomping around, and arms waving at each other. Don’t worry they are not angry. This is the baseball betting crew.